Cultural

“The cosmos is dark, comrades, very dark”: so said Yuri Gagarin on seeing Earth from space for the first time. The mission of his fellow cosmonaut, Alexei Leonov, the first man to conduct a space walk a few years later, provoked other profound thoughts on the vast distances separating the heavenly bodies and the equally immense expanses of nothingness between them. The melancholy of the cosmonaut is more than a metaphor in this production, which is perhaps the most visually stunning work from the Canadian wizard of the stage, Robert Lepage, whose Greek debut this is. The Cold War space and arms race between the Soviets and Americans, the Alien Intelligence programme and the childhood and adolescent memories of two brothers who clash after the death of their mother provide the raw material for this unique theatrical experience which addresses the Big Question: are we alone in the universe. The Far Side of the Moon, which features music written for the production by Laurie Anderson, is a seminal production in world theatre.

The Far Side of the Moon was first performed at Le Théâtre du Trident in Quebec City on February 29th 2000.
Ex Machina is funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, Quebec’s Arts and Literature Council and the City of Quebec.
This production has been subsidized by the Millennium Arts Fund of the Canada Council for the Arts.www.exmachina.qc.ca